The Good, The Bad, The Beautiful

Today started with chocolate chip pancakes for me and my daughter, Rachel, with her initials in the pancake. Yum! She loved it. It was a great way to start the day!!

My mother-in-law and I went browsing through Home Goods later in the day and you will never guess what I bought!!!!!! A runner!!! Like I really need one! But this one is so pretty and like no other runner I have. It's blue!!! I have no blue in my house, well, barely any blue. Check this out! Isn't it a whole different look? I just love it!!!

My mother-in-law is a very sweet person and I am happy we share the relationship we do. My biggest gripe with her, though, is that she never wants me to buy her anything for her birthday, Christmas or Mother's Day. I could not imagine not getting her something for those special days and since I am close to her, I know what she likes. Lately I have really been finding great things for her that I have been so excited to give her. For this past Christmas, I found a beautiful tapestry wall hanging. Isn't it great?

I thought is was just beautiful and I was so excited to give it to her. She really seemed to like it, though she felt the colors were better for my home, rather than hers. She couldn't wait to hang it. Days passed. Weeks passed. Months passed. The wall hanging was never hung. I just knew what was coming and sure enough, I was right. Today she gave it back to me because she felt it was better for my house. I cannot tell you how many gifts she has given back to me. When it first happened, I was so very insulted and hurt. When she gave my daughter back something she had selected for her grandma, that pretty much took the cake for me. I think I will not try to find the perfect gift any longer. Does that sound horrible?

On the bright side, though, and yes, there is a bright side. Doesn't this tapestry look just lovely in my living room?

Yes, I love it! And the colors are great!!! Even though my mother-in-law doesn't like anything I get for her, she has done a really wonderful thing for me that I will treasure all the days of my life. I found a really cute Mary Englebreit puzzle at Target, oh, probably last year some time. I have zippo patience for puzzles, so I asked my mother-in-law if she wanted to put it together for me because she loves puzzles. She has the space to put it in a seldom utilized room, so she can leave it out and come back to it often to put a few pieces in here and there. Well, mywonderful mother-in-law just finished it and presented it to me with such pride. I am thrilled!!!! I just love it!!!!

It's not the greatest picture as there is a glare, but it was worse without the flash. I'm still trying to perfect my picture-taking abilities. So, that was my day. Not bad!! I enjoyed it. Oh, and since I had to move something to hang the tapestry - though it is just temporarily hung, as it came with a beautiful rod for hanging that I'm hesitant to secure. I am one of those rearrangers, so I don't think I should secure this rod and then move things around in the Fall and have huge holes I'd have to fix. Yuck!!

So, as I just said, since I had to move something to hang the tapestry, had to share a picture of the inside of my front door with the heart-shaped wreath that relocated for the sake of the tapestry. Tough break, but someone had to do it and the wreath will be such a pretty thing to look at whenever I walk out my front door.

I had fun writing this post today and sharing all of these pictures. I have a really hard time making my post look pretty as it always posts as a big, paragraph-less blob. I am a stickler for being grammatically correct, so I hate lacking paragraphs where paragraphs should be.
When I preview the post before publishing it, it looks great, but when it publishes - yuck!!! I hope today's turns out okay. Oh me and my idiosyncrasies - we all have em!!! Some are good. Some are bad. And some . . . like a certain tapestry and a certain Mary Englebreit puzzle - are just beautiful!!!!!